Chart Groups Tab

If this is a new of, or if new chart directories need to be added, use:
Options>Charts>Chart Files Tab or
Options>Charts>Chart Downloader Tab
to Add the new chart directories.

Then click OK to exit from Options and to Scan Charts and Update Database .
After the update finishes, select:
Options>Charts>Chart Groups Tab
in order to Add a New Group.

Now, directories of charts or individual chart file(s) can be added to the chart group(s).

In Options→Charts select “Chart Groups Tab”

You will see two panes. The top pane contains “All Available Charts”, which are the charts you have installed. The bottom pane allows you to create, edit, and delete Groups. Note that there is always an “All Charts” group. This Group is not editable. New Groups which you create may have chart directories or individual charts added to them by selecting the item in the top pane and touching the “Add” button.

You may also remove individual charts or directories from Groups by selecting the desired item in the bottom pane, and touch “Remove Chart”. Please note that “removing” an item from the Group does not remove it from your “Available” set of charts. The item is simply made unavailable when the Group is in use.

It is a good idea to have a empty chart group, only the background Map will be shown. “Unlimited” zooming is allowed. This can be useful for very large scale plotting, for example.

You may have many charts loaded in your active database. Some of them have overlapping coverage at the same scale, so that when quilted the logic does not know which of potentially several charts at the same scale to choose from. Some examples:

1. In the Bahamas there are a few publishers of charts, covering the same areas, with radically different presentations. Sometimes you may want to see one set (say planning charts of small scale), and other times you only want navigation charts of the best scale possible.
2. Leave a Group empty, in which case only the background chart will be displayed, very useful sometimes.
3. Pilot charts as one Group, normal navigation charts as another Group, makes it possible to quickly switch between them.
4. You have both Raster and Vector charts of the same area and want to be able to display each type separately, and switch quickly between them.
5. In another universe, NGA charts in one group, standard NOAA RNCs in another, standard NOAA ENCs in another group, British UKHO in a third group or even a group with both ENC and RNC of a particular USCG District.
6. The Chart Group function allows us to define multiple Groups, with different chart directories in each group. The Group desired for viewing may be selected quickly, through the right-click menu, without adding or deleting charts from the Active database.

If there are no chart directories listed under All available charts you will not be able to “Add” Chart Groups. A newly added chart directory (also called a folder) cannot be added to a Chart Group unless the Chart Database has been Updated .

From version 4.8.0 it's possible to quickly change between the first 10 listed chart groups. The numerical keys 0,1,2……..9 corresponds to the chart groups 1,2,3…..10, whatever their name is. It is very simple to use, for example just press “4” and the display changes to show chart group #4 that the user added. Note that group “0” always contains the “All Charts” Chart group.

In this illustration the navigator generally uses the US charts, when available. Coming into Baia do Porto Santo a detailed chart would be great, but no such US chart is available on board. A switch to the UK chart group solves the problem.

Select the Group you want to use, by a right-click context menu item called “Chart Groups”. As you switch Groups the logic tries to select a chart and scale that closely matches the situation present before the switch. As you may understand, sometimes the fit is not reasonable, so the resulting view may be surprising.

Finally, if you have no Groups defined, as in the default installation, all installed charts are always available.

For very large chart sets of charts, the display speed, access and use of the charts is improved by judicious use of Chart Files directories and Chart Groups.

• In Chart Files, rather than setting a single path (eg: c:\charts) to the “charts” folder, set multiple paths to sub folders (eg: c:\charts\enc\uscg01, c:\charts\enc\uscg07, etc).
• Then assign a new Chart Group to each of those folders. You can then select the appropriate chart group with a right click and hovering over “Chart Groups” and selecting the chart group needed.

In Chart Files Tab with EG: c:/charts (don't have this in the list!)

c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/ENC/GC01/
c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/ENC/GC05/
c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/ENC/NewZealand
c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/RNC/GC01/
c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/RNC/GC05/
c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/RNC/NewZealand
c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/BSB/Canada/
c:/users/Dave/Documents/mbtiles/NewZealand <---MBtiles Files
c:/users/Dave/Documents/sat/NewZealand     <---Satellite Files
c:/users/Dave/Documents/kap/NewZealand     <---Weatherfax Files

In Chart Groups Tab

e01   c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/ENC/GC01/
e05   c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/ENC/GC05/
eNZ   c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/ENC/NewZealand
r01   c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/RNC/GC01/
r02   c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/RNC/GC05/
rNZ   c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/RNC/NewZealand
rCan  c:/users/Dave/Documents/charts/BSB/Canada/
mbNZ  c:/users/Dave/Documents/mbtiles/NewZealand <--MBtiles Files
msNZ  c:/users/Dave/Documents/sat/NewZealand  <---Satellite Files
kapNZ c:/users/Dave/Documents/kap/NewZealand  <---Weatherfax Files

Example only, does not conform to Chart Downloader Tab defaults. Generally use the Chart Downloader Tab defaults when available.

Alternatively, you can put the mbtiles in with your favorite charts and turn the mbtiles show/hide with the Chart Status Bar

See the advantage of Using your Chart Groups above.

Please Refer to Chart Status Bar

It is possible to have multiple instances of CM93v2 in different Chart Groups. Above we have 5 instances loaded in various chart groups. The view is of “All Active Charts”.

OpenCP also supports multiple partial CM93 data sets.

The instances are loaded, from left to right, in the order of the chart groups.

In this situation, only the leftmost instance of CM93, that is not excluded from the quilt, will be displayed. Above, it is the instance represented by the yellow rectangle.

Select the chart folder listed in the top pane. Touch “Add” to add this folder to the selected group. Same as OpenCPN desktop….

Chart groups and chart downloader have nothing to do with each other, if you have the downloader configured to update all your charts, then it will update all your charts and groups showing a subset of those chart will see updated charts.

Creating a chart group does not copy the charts anywhere, it is just a view on a subset of your chart collection.

You would have to define both those subfolders you want to use in the groups in the list of chart directories. That is possible and OpenCPN does handle having to go through the same chart files on the disk mutliple times while scanning for charts just fine.

You can't reference individual charts in the group, they must be organized into folders.

Do not move the charts you want to keep up to date using the chart downloader to different locations on disk unless you are really sure you understand what that implies though, you will very likely end up having multiple versions of the same charts laying around, some of them outdated (= a mess).